1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to an improved data processing system, and, more specifically, to a computer implemented method, a data processing system, and a computer program product for application-aware recording and replay of changes.
2. Description of the Related Art
On many occasions, there may be a need to record the changes in a system due to user interactions. The recording may be necessary for a variety of applications like transaction logging in a database system, regression testing by applying, or replaying the same interactions on different versions of the system, applying the same changes to more than one system, such as system configuration upgrades, applying the same changes to a different system when the interactions were initiated on a wrong target, or to perform “what if” analysis of one or more changes to different systems. In many of these situations, the type of information to be recorded could be application-specific so that the information gathering and storage can be made more stable and efficient.
The current practice of user interaction recording is based on interface-specific data like controls, type of controls (such as drop-down versus checkboxes), layout of the controls within a page, or in other cases, usage of an application programming interfaces. The current practice typically leads to failures in accurately replaying the recordings when any of the interface details change. Interface changes may include changing a control type or moving a control is from one page to another, causing a change in the layout and the availability of controls.
The replay may also be governed by application-specific rules to handle different types of target systems and unexpected mismatches, and errors may occur. The mismatch and error issues may lead to numerous maintenance issues, as well as an inability to persist the pre-recorded user interactions. There is a need to provide more effective recording of user interactions and replay of those recorded interaction.